


Comedy of Manners

by AMarguerite



Series: Drury Lane [1]
Category: Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
Genre: Alternate Universe - Celebrity, Gen, Sort Of, they are Georgian era celebrities
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-08
Updated: 2019-03-08
Packaged: 2019-11-13 16:43:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,090
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18035336
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AMarguerite/pseuds/AMarguerite
Summary: nyonglupita prompted "celebrity AU" so I made it a Georgian celebrity AU. Mr. Bennet is a playwright, famous for his comedies of manners, and his daughters are celebrity actresses.





	Comedy of Manners

**Author's Note:**

  * For [SeaStorm](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SeaStorm/gifts).



September 1797.

Despite having spent all his career writing comedies of manners, it often surprised Thomas Bennet that his life so resembled his art. Everything always seemed to go wrong, in ways that would eventually be funny, but were agonizing when one was a participant rather than a spectator. Take this evening, for example. 

The prompter being ill, Thomas was in the wings, listening to John Palmer’s understudy thoroughly mangle one of the best comedic monologues in  _Emilia’s Sensible Education_. It was one of Thomas’s most beloved comedies, and this monologue ordinarily had the house roaring with laughter. Now Thomas could hear every whisper and mutter from the pit.

William Collins paused. 

“– the first of many a manly tear,” prompted Thomas.

Collins ineptly caught up the line, mangling the meter  _of course_.

Good God, why had Thomas even thought to give this cousin of his a chance on the stage? It turned out that William Collins had  _not_  been putting on a character when he did so brilliant a turn as Malvolio, in the provinces. That was his natural character. Now that he was called upon not to be an obsequious servant attempting to butter up his mistress, but a parody of Rousseauan hero, he was agonizing to watch.

‘Why did I skip this afternoon’s rehearsal?’ thought Thomas, dragging his hands down his face. 

‘Laziness’ he promptly thought, and just as promptly dismissed the thought. It was some consolation that his own daughters, Jane and Elizabeth, were onstage. There were at least two people in the scene who knew both their parts and their characters. 

Jane did not meet Thomas’s eye or break her character. She kept her by now uncomfortable attitude, looking every inch the watering-pot Rousseuean heroine. But then again, Jane was a true professional; in seriousness and dedication to her art the equal for Sarah Siddons, and unmatched, in the current roster at Drury Lane, in beauty, grace, or sweetness of voice. She had inherited all the fine lady roles when Elizabeth Farren had retired to marry the Earl of Derby, and inhabited each part magnificently. No other actress won such sympathy as Hero, or made Cecilia so thoroughly likable. Thomas often heard it said– admittedly by his wife, a former actress herself– that Jane Bennet would someday marry as well as Elizabeth Farren. 

Thomas’s second daughter, Elizabeth, was only an understudy for Dora Jordan (who was currently at home, having another one of the Duke of Clarence’s illegitimate children). Elizabeth had no reputation for professionalism to uphold. She met his eye with a pained look. Thomas grimaced but tried not to distract her. He glanced at the boxes nearest the stage and saw of the three gentlemen present, one was sitting with his elbow on the rail and his chin in his hand, staring Jane, with a dreamy and abstracted air; one was asleep; and one boredly crossing his arms, rolling his eyes, and sighing. Oh God, everyone would see this third gentleman when Collins crossed downstage left to weep over a wilted fern….

Elizabeth saw the line of her father’s gaze and pursed her lips. Then she deliberately mirrored the third gentleman. Not quite in keeping with her character– a stand in for all the female authors who had objected to Rousseau’s theories on the education of women– but by God was it accurate. Elizabeth was a skilled mimic; the audience began to titter. Elizabeth matched the gentleman’s look of haughty boredom, the tenor of his sighs. The gentleman was not paying enough attention to notice, and when Elizabeth began her mocking response to the hero’s monologue, did not seem to realize that Elizabeth was mocking  _him_ as well.

Elizabeth neatly won back the audience and tripped gaily offstage, Jane in tow, to delighted applause. 

Thomas drew back as the dancers all tumbled out for the balletic interlude, and followed his daughters further into the warren of curtained off spaces backstage. (Collins, fortunately, had exited the opposite side of the stage.) “Well done, Lizzy. Your mimicry somehow kept the cheap seats from rioting.”

“That blasted Mr. Darcy,” muttered Elizabeth, lifting off her wig and turning so that the dressers could take her cap and shawl and replace it with a traveling cloak for the next scene. “I don’t think he even realized I  _was_ mimicking him.”

“You know that gentleman?” asked Thomas. He was surprised; everyone cried up Darcy as the preeminent writer of tragedies of the age. Indeed, he'd become so successful at writing depressing speeches he'd become an MP. 

“As much as I wish to,” said Elizabeth. “He’s the one who said that Jane  _smiled too much_ as Cecilia, and that my Rosalind was only  _tolerable_. I dislike him almost as much as he dislikes me.”

“Why did he take a box so near the stage if he dislikes the two of you?” asked Miss Lucas, coming over to make their Gilpin-esque third for the act two entrance.

Elizabeth snorted. “Because his friend Mr. Bingley likes Jane in equal proportion to how much Mr. Darcy dislikes me.”

Jane flushed and pulled on her cloak. “Quieter, Lizzy, the dance is coming to an end.”

Thomas was uncomfortably aware that most actresses could not hold onto their respectability, the way Elizabeth Farren or Sarah Siddons did. Mrs. Bennet certainly had not. She’d had a string of wealthy keepers before deciding she could no longer rely on her beauty to sustain a career onstage and settling on Thomas as a husband. Though Thomas had told Mrs. Bennet she was never to press any of the girls to accept a keeper, she seldom listened to anything he had to say. (Alas, when she’d been on the stage he’d been so infatuated, he’d rewritten parts for her, rather than realizing she was protesting not because she disliked the roles he’d created for her in his sly satires; but because she honestly did not understand them.) 

Thomas said, with unaccustomed seriousness, “Jane, don’t let your mother force you into company with Mr. Bingley, if you do not wish it.”

Jane said, a little flustered, “That’s our cue.”

Indeed, the audience dutifully applauded, and his daughters sailed out,'Jane and Miss Lucas tossing set-up lines for Elizabeth to smack down the wicket, as if scoring at cricket. Thomas relaxed. His daughters had grown up with this sort of banter. They made it look easy, natural, and playful. Even disapproving Mr. Darcy was smiling. 

“Thank heaven,” said Thomas, skimming through his script, “that I killed off the hero in act three.” 


End file.
